New York Times / Joel Leyden: Transit Agency Weighs a Digital Upgrade for Aging Subway Cars

                                   N.Y. / Region

• WORLD
• U.S.
• N.Y. / REGION
• BUSINESS
• TECHNOLOGY
• SCIENCE
• HEALTH
• SPORTS
• OPINION
• ARTS
• STYLE
• TRAVEL
• JOBS
• REAL ESTATE
• AUTOS

Transit Agency Weighs a Digital Upgrade for Aging Subway Cars

Michael Appleton for The New York Times

A Brooklyn-bound L train. If the upgrade is put into effect, automated station announcements and digital displays would come to more than 1,700 aging subway cars.

By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM

Published: June 16, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/17/nyregion/transit-agency-weighs-digital-upgrade-for-subway-cars.html?_r=2

• RECOMMEND
• TWITTER
• SIGN IN TO E-MAIL
• PRINT
• REPRINTS
• SHARE

New York City Transit is looking for a way to bring some of its older subway cars into the digital age.

Enlarge This Image

Michael Appleton for The New York Times

An LED sign providing travel information on a southbound E train.

The upgrade, if put into effect, would bring automated station announcements and digital route displays to more than 1,700 aging subway cars, including the entirety of the B, D, and Nos. 1, 3 and 7 lines.

Those amenities come standard on the system’s blue-hued modern trains. Currently, the most high-tech signage on a B train is a plastic roll sign operated via hand-crank.

To subway officials, intent on improving the passenger experience, the change would bring clearer, real-time travel information to riders tired of screechy intercoms and static maps.

But the end of live announcements could signal another step in the creeping dehumanization of a subway system already shedding station agents and, on some cars, train operators.

It was only a decade ago when the first futuristic new trains landed on the Lexington and Seventh Avenue lines, bearing a stiff, robotic oeuvre of automated announcements — the first time since 1904, when conductors called out “Step lively!” to boarding passengers, that a human did not inform fellow humans about a coming station.

“You hate to see the human element go out of these things,” said Harry Nugent, whose wordplay as a conductor on the No. 1 line earned him book offers and radio work. As his train lurched into a station, he was known to offer an invitation over the intercom: “Hey, you need a lift? I’m going uptown.”

Still, Mr. Nugent, now retired and still silver-tongued at 81, conceded that an automated system had its advantages.

“When I first started in the subway, I would have been delighted with that, because it would have been less pressure,” he said in an interview. “Conductors didn’t particularly enjoy making announcements, and as I used to say, the announcements they made were probably the equivalent of the graffiti on the side of the train.”

If passengers can better understand what is being said, he added, “well, that probably makes it easier all around.”

Few conductors today take a cue from Mr. Nugent and, say, describe the 66th Street station as “eight or nine feet beneath Broadway and probably an octave under Lincoln Center.”

And more often than not, subway conductors sound less than enthused about their monotonous task, delivering the requisite transfer options in a jumbled rush, equal parts impatience and boredom. And errors are, well, only human.

“I haven’t heard the robot make a mistake,” said Andrew Albert, chairman of the New York City Transit Riders Council. “I have heard the human make a mistake.”

Neither a timeline nor an estimated cost for the upgrade was available on Thursday, mostly because the transit agency still needs to determine if the idea is feasible.

Conductors who still make live announcements are constrained by a blue agency handbook, which lays out the dozen or so phrases they are allowed to say over the intercom. The guide once warned that there was “a very fine line between clever and obnoxious.”

Some riders, enjoying the amenities of more modern trains on Thursday, said they did not especially mind the changes.

“I would have nostalgia for the old way if it worked all the time,” said Vilian Ivantchev, 23, a guitarist and music student who has lived in the city since he was a teenager. “But sometimes you can’t hear it. The automation is always clear.”

 “This is more George Orwell,” Joel Leyden, 56, who was raised in the city, said on an uptown N train. “But as long as it works, that’s the bottom line.”

Matt Flegenheimer contributed reporting.

A version of this article appeared in print on June 17, 2011, on page A27 of the New York edition with the headline: Transit Agency Weighs a Digital Upgrade for Aging Subway Cars.

American Jewish Organizations, President Barack Obama and Israel

American Jewish Organizations and Obama

Posted by Caroline Glick May 29th 2011 at 8:00 am in Israel, Obama | Comments (76)

President Obama’s speech on the Middle East at the State Department last week, his icy glares at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office last Friday, his address before the AIPAC conference on Sunday, and his subsequent press briefings have all made clear that he is not sympathetically inclined toward Israel, nor does he consider Israel an ally worth defending.

Obama’s advocacy of the 1949 armistice lines as a starting point for negotiations demonstrate his lack of support for Israel’s right to defensible borders. His non-response to the Hamas-Fatah unity deal demonstrates that there is nothing the Palestinians can do that will make him accept the reality that their commitment to Israel’s destruction, rather than Israel’s continued control over Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, is the reason there is no peace between them and Israel.

And yet, disturbingly, major Jewish American organizations took it upon themselves this past week to defend Obama to their members and to the general public. The most prominent example of this was the Anti-Defamation League’s press release following Obama’s State Department speech. After Obama endorsed the Palestinian position that negotiations must be based on the indefensible 1949 armistice lines, and did so in the face of explicit Israeli entreaties that he abstain from doing so, the ADL released a statement applauding Obama.

ADL leaders Abe Foxman and Robert Sugarman congratulated Obama for his support for Israel. Among other things, their statement said, “This Administration has come a long way in two years in terms of understanding of the nuances involved in bringing about Israeli-Palestinian peace and a better understanding of the realities and challenges confronting Israel.”

Why on earth did the ADL feel it necessary to defend the indefensible? Why, in the midst of an open fight between Obama and the Israeli government, did the ADL feel it necessary to side with Obama against the government of Israel?

In his speech before AIPAC on Sunday, Obama did not repudiate his attachment to the Palestinians’ negotiating position. He did not mention any objection to the Palestinian demand to overrun Israel with millions of foreign Arabs. He did not announce any steps the U.S. will take to end its support for the Hamas-controlled Palestinian Authority, despite the fact that continued funding is outlawed by U.S. terror finance laws.

Moreover, Obama’s speech to AIPAC included a barely-veiled threat against Israel when he asserted, “There is a reason why the Palestinians are pursuing their interests at the United Nations. They recognize that there is an impatience with the peace process – or the absence of one. Not just in the Arab world, but in Latin America, in Europe, and in Asia. That impatience is growing, and is already manifesting itself in capitols around the world.”

In making this statement, Obama was effectively providing backing to the international campaign to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist. The forces promoting the Palestinian narrative throughout the world are increasingly calling for the destruction of Israel. Simply by mentioning this campaign without explaining that it is inherently anti-Semitic or at least in inherently hostile to Israel’s right to exist, Obama justified it.

And yet, Stand With Us, an organization founded to fight the campaign to delegitimize Israel, endorsed Obama’s AIPAC speech. In a press release issued shortly after Obama concluded his remarks at AIPAC, Stand With Us co-founder and CEO Roz Rothstein praised Obama saying, “We appreciated [Obama's] repeated assurance that no debate about Israel’s legitimacy will ever be tolerated.”

The question is, why are American Jewish leaders defending Obama?

It would seem that there are three possible explanations.

The first explanation is fear. Several American Jewish philanthropists have mentioned over the past two years that they fear Obama. If he is reelected, they worry that since he will no longer need Jewish political contributions, he might strike out at Jewish-owned businesses the way he struck out at Republican-owned General Motors car dealerships when he nationalized GM. If they attack Obama for his positions on Israel, they worry that they will give him further justification for going after them.

The obvious response to these fears, it would seem, is to do everything possible to ensure that Obama is not reelected. If he is hostile enough to even consider going after American Jewish interests in a second term, then nothing American Jews do or don’t do will have any impact on him.

The second, perhaps more plausible, explanation is that Jewish leaders are concerned that their fellow American Jews are more attached to their identity as Democrats than they are to their identity as Jews. True, the overwhelming majority of American Jews express firm support for Israel. A poll carried out last week for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle Eastern Reporting in America (CAMERA) found that support for Israel is nearly unanimous among American Jews.

Yet neither the CAMERA poll nor previous surveys by the American Jewish Committee or Brandeis which had similar findings asked respondents to weigh their support for Israel against support for the Democratic Party. So it is possible that leaders are worried that if they oppose Obama’s anti-Israel positions too strongly, they will lose some support.

Survey information would be helpful for sorting out this issue. But on the face of things, it seems likely that serious donors to these groups care far more about Israel than the Democratic Party. The rest will either leave the organizations or be convinced that supporting Israel is more important than supporting Obama.

The third reason why U.S. Jewish leaders may be defending Obama’s positions on Israel is because the Israeli left defends his position on Israel. In the face of Obama’s latest baiting of Netanyahu, opposition leader Tzipi Livni attacked Netanyahu and accused him of destroying Israel’s relations with the U.S. She and her followers also defended Obama’s policies. Many American Jewish leaders must certainly believe that they cannot be more pro-Israel than the Israeli left.

Clearly, the party most responsible for calling out Livni and her associates for their irresponsible behavior is the Israeli public, which voted for Netanyahu and his coalition to lead the country rather than Livni and her party. But it important for American Jewish leaders to recognize the game being played – namely, Livni and Kadima are trying to exploit Obama’s position on Israel in an attempt to win a partisan battle against Netanyahu and Likud – before they jump into it.

Non-Jewish American supporters of Israel never tire of asking how it is that so many American Jews voted for Obama in 2008. Perhaps the easiest explanation is because the American Jewish leadership papered over his hostility.

Originally published in The Jewish Press.

Obama's Betrayal of Israel

Obama's Betrayal of Israel

| Print |

E-mail

WRITTEN BY CHIP WOOD

FRIDAY, 10 JUNE 2011 08:07

0 When a woman showed up at the Soroka Medical Center in Beer Sheva, Israel, she had burns covering more than 45 percent of her body. A tragic accident at her home in a Gaza refugee camp came close to taking her life. There was never a thought of turning her away simply because she was Palestinian. That’s not how things are done in Israel. Jewish doctors worked day and night to save her, without expecting that they would receive even a penny in payment. After extensive treatments that did, in fact, save her life, Wafa al-Biri was released from the hospital and returned to her family in Gaza. She was told to come back for a routine follow-up and assured there would be no charge for that visit, either. Al-Biri returned to the border between Gaza and Israel and asked permission to enter. A routine security check revealed she was carrying enough explosives in her underwear to destroy the clinic where she was treated and kill not just herself, but the doctors who worked so hard to save her. And that, my friends, is what it’s like to live in Israel these days. As terrible as this story is, here’s a sequel that’s even more horrible: Had al-Biri succeeded in her deadly mission, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas would probably have named a public park after her. This is the kind of enemy Israel faces. These are the sorts of people who have taken a solemn vow to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth. They have been taught — and they honestly believe — that they have a sacred duty to kill any infidel they can. (That includes us, by the way; Jews are at the top of the list.) Here’s the point of today’s column: These are the same people the President of the United States wants to guarantee sanctuary a stone’s throw (or a rocket’s launch) from Jerusalem. Make no mistake about it: If Barack Obama’s insane policy of forcing Israel to retreat to its pre-1967 borders is implemented, the very survival of the most loyal friend we have in the Middle East will be at risk. If you opened this article hoping to find a word of sympathy for the Palestinian cause, you will be sorely disappointed. I want to correct some of the appalling lies that have been told about the Palestinians’ so-called “noble struggle” for their homeland. First of all, the Israelis did not drive a single Arab from their “sacred homeland.” Arabs living in what became Israel in 1948 were welcome to stay. They might not enjoy all of the rights, privileges and advantages of the people who won the war. But they were not slain, enslaved, or driven from their homes. I visited Israel. I was a guest in the homes of several Arabs whose parents (and in some cases, whose grandparents) decided to stay. Every single person with whom I spoke was glad to be living in Israel. They were grateful for the opportunities they had, the affluence they enjoyed, and the security they felt. Their lives were so much better — and in so many ways — than what their relatives in surrounding lands endured. The women in particular were glad they were not subject to the ancient traditions of their Muslim ancestors. They were proud to be educated and independent. Not for them concealment behind a burqa that left only their eyes exposed. They did not hesitate to tell me their greatest fear: that the jihadists in neighboring countries would start a war that would destroy them, their families, their homes, and their homeland. While I was in the Middle East, I also visited some of the refugee camps in Jordan, Syria, and Egypt. Or rather, I visited camps in what used to be those countries, before they waged a surprise war on Israel in 1967 — and lost. In the aftermath of what became known as “The Six-Day War,” thousands of Arabs fled from what had been their ancestral homes into neighboring countries, where they were herded into concentration camps and forced to stay for the next 30 years. Please understand what I’m saying: The Arab countries surrounding Israel refused to let their brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews assimilate into their own lands. Instead, they were kept in unbelievable squalor for a generation. Whole families were confined to one room in a mud hut, with no electricity and no running water. And they were forced to live like this not for a year or two, but for decades. You will not be surprised to learn that the camps became breeding grounds for terrorists and suicide bombers. I, for one, believe it was planned that way. In speech last month, Obama insisted Israel agree to return to borders that did not even exist prior to the Arab war against Israel. Since I agree that to do so would be suicide, I was glad to see that Israel’s prime minister wasted no time in rejecting our President’s outrageous demands. I thought Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to a joint meeting of our Congress was incredibly powerful. A lot of U.S. Congressmen obviously agreed, because they interrupted him with applause more than 50 times. It made the Democrats’ reaction during Obama’s State of the Union speech look pallid by comparison. I have a few comments before I sign off and turn the rebuttal over to you. I always enjoy my readers’ responses. But I’m especially looking forward to seeing what some of you have to say when you comment at the end of this piece. First, let me make two more observations. One is that I wish our President were one-tenth as passionate in defending our country and our interests as Israel’s prime minister is in representing his. We used to have Presidents who were proud of their country and eager to defend it; I hope next year we will elect one again. The other is a question: What is it with Jewish people who live in the United States? No sooner had Netanyahu returned to Israel than a Zogby poll came out, stating that the majority of Jews in this country still support Obama. To any sons or daughters of Judah reading this, may I ask you something? Don’t you realize that your people, their country and their noblest aspirations are being sacrificed by a scheming, amoral politician who happens to inhabit the White House? Wake up and smell the coffee, as my teenage grandchildren would say. Chip Wood was the first news editor of The Review of the News and also wrote for American Opinion, our two predecessor publications. He is now the geopolitical editor of Personal Liberty Digest, where his Straight Talk column appears weekly. This article first appeared in PersonalLiberty.com and has been reprinted with permission.

Hartford PR SEO Social Media Marketing Group To Attend CT Business Expo

Hartford PR SEO Social Media Marketing Group To Attend CT Business Expo 1digg By Herb Brandon Israel News Agency www.israelnewsagency.com/ctbusinessexpoconnecticutnetworkingeventssocialmediaseopradvertisingdigitalfacebookhartfordwebsitesmarketingreputationmanagementcrisiscommunicationsecommerce88060711.html Hartford, CT ---- June 7, 2011 .... The Hartford PR SEO Social Media Marketing Group has announced that it will be attending the CT Business Expo in Hartford, Connecticut on June 9. HartfordPr.co and HartfordSocialMedia.com have been providing Internet marketing, digital PR, SEO and social media services since 1995. The Leyden Digital PR, SEO, Social Media Group, which owns and operates HartfordPr.co and HartfordSocialMedia.com is credited for creating some of the first commercial, governmental and news Websites on the Web.  The Leyden Digital PR, SEO, Social Media Group, which has consulted the US State Department and the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has recently opened an office in the Greater Hartford Area serving Hartford, West Hartford, Avon, Farmington, Newington, South Windsor, Manchester, Simsbury, Vernon, Stamford, New Haven, Middletown and Springfield, Mass. "The Hartford PR, SEO, Social Media Group has online professional marketing experience since 1995," says CEO Joel Leyden. "We are pioneers in social media, reputation management and optimizing content for Google, Google News, AOL, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. We have created hundreds of Websites which attract millions of B2B and B2C on a daily basis. We know what works and what does not work. We practically invented the term integrated marketing where we coordinate offline PR, branding and advertising activities and make them sing on the Net or what is referred to as Web 2.0 and Web 3.0." Joel Leyden, who has been interviewed by TIME, CNN, FOX, New York Times, Washington Post and several other respected national and international media for his social and new media work, has thousands of followers on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. The Leyden Communications Group's many Websites include SocialMediaPioneer.com, IntegratedMarketingProfessional.com and ReputationManagementPR.com. "We see the CT Business Expo as an exciting opportunity to create awareness from those from Connecticut, New York, Rhode Island and Massachusetts as to how to use social media, e-commerce and SEO to generate sales leads and secure greater ROI from corporate, governmental and non-profit marketing budgets," says Leyden. "We realize that many consumers do not know the right questions to ask when it comes to hiring an e-commerce, social media or Internet marketing company and as such get burned by dishonest social media and SEO companies that promise the world. We suggest that these consumers ask a few informed questions when hiring a social media company. How many years have you been in business? What is your knowledge of journalism, classic PR and advertising? Can you provide examples of your work? And lastly, how many friends do you have on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn?" The Connecticut Business Expo provides an unmatched opportunity for the local business community to meet and develop strategic partnerships with thousands of CT Expo attendees all under one roof for one day a year. In doing so they maximize their business exposure in the market, build new business relationships, generate significant new leads with hard to reach business decision makers, introduce new products to the marketplace, gain valuable insights on maximizing business sales, efficiency, team building and motivation, network with B2B and consumer product vendors and are invited to take part in free educational training seminars. Whether these companies specialize in insurance, real estate, food, retail or manufacturing, they will all learn a bit more from the CT Business Expo. "Thanks to Comcast Business Class, this years CT Business Expo, June 9, 2011, at Hartford's Connecticut Convention Center will be one of the best ever," says Hartford PR SEO Social Media Senior VP Joyce Boncal. "With over 200 exhibitors and more than 5,000 expected attendees, the excitement will be spread quickly. The seminars, always well attended, are given by experts and cover numerous subjects of interest to business people from 'Cold Calling' to 'Mobile Technology.' Business owners, from solopreneurs to large corporations attend the Expo. The show has something for everyone offering everything from authors, networking and exhibitors to a Show Floor Theater." Sponsors of the CT Business Expo are Cox Business, First Niagra, Pro Systems, Greater Hartford Arts Council, Jobs Connecticut Now, Peter Pan Bus Lines, Joseph Merritt and Co, U. of Hartford, Network Imaging, NBC Connecticut, and WDRC. To register for the CT Business Expo or for more information visit www.ctbexpo.com. The Expo hours are from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. The above news content was edited and SEO optimized in Israel by the Leyden Digital PR SEO New Media Group - Israel, New York, Hartford. Internet Marketing SEO Professionals ask: Can People Find Your Website? ISRAEL NEWS AGENCY Sponsored byxxxxxx IsraelSEOPr.comNewYorkDigitalPr.com Hosted by

Academician: Israel Justice System Favors Abusive Mothers

by INN Staff

Follow Israel news on  and .

A groundbreaking academic conference entitled “Pink Crime: Women, Crime & Punishment” has presented hitherto unknown research alleging anti-male bias in the justice system.

The international multidisciplinary conference was held Monday and Tuesday by the criminology departments at the Ariel University Center and the Netanya Academic College.

Dr. Yoav Mazeh, an expert on family law, described his research comparing punishment meted out in Israeli courts against men and women for similar cases of child abuse. He enumerated a list of cases involving both abusive fathers and mothers, showing that in comparable cases, fathers were sentenced to significant prison time while mothers received no more than a suspended sentence.

 

Especially worrying, said Mazeh, was a pattern of behavior by the Prosecution, showing a bias toward lenience for female child abusers. While the Prosecution usually appeals soft sentences, in the case of abusive -- even sadistic -- mothers it tends to do the opposite, he said. Mazeh pointed to several cases in which the Prosecution revised its own charge sheets against abusive mothers, deleting their more serious offenses from the charge sheets.

 

Mazeh said that his research leads him to believe that this is a recurring pattern of behavior on the part of the Prosecution. He noted that in the case of Marie Pizem, who has been convicted of soliciting the murder of her 4-year-old daughter Rose, the Prosecution had intended to amend the charge sheet so that she would receive a maximum of five years in jail. It was only the angry public reaction to news of this intent that caused the Prosecution to change its mind, he said.

 

Mazeh quoted an email he received from a senior member of the Prosecution who openly admitted that the organization has a pro-female bias and said that this was justified by “social and historic” reasons, among others.

 

Pendulum in swing

Dr. Gabriel Cavaglion of the Ashkelon Academic College described Israeli press attitudes toward female abusers. He noted a pattern of reporting that portrayed mothers who abuse or even murder their children as victims worthy of sympathy, rather than as perpetrators of heinous crimes. 

 

Avi Chimi, a well-known criminal attorney, said that while police attitude toward female complainants used to be scornful, “the pendulum has now swung to the opposite extreme.” In the current atmosphere, he said, it is virtually impossible to successfully represent men accused of crimes against women in the Israeli courts. Chimi said, only half-jokingly, that his wife, who is a criminologist, had also pressured him not to “overdo it” in his lecture.  

 

Another speaker was MK Yulia Shamalov-Berkovich (Kadima), who called for a return to family values and a “sane feminism” that is not anti-men. 

 

Arutz Sheva journalist Gil Ronen, an activist for traditional family values, participated in the conference and spoke on what he said was “an ongoing rebellion” among leading researchers on domestic violence in the United States, against gender feminist pressure requiring them to juggle statistics and make their research fit an anti-patriarchal mold. He quoted at length from lectures by Prof. Murray Straus of Hew Hampshire University, the world’s leading researcher on domestic violence, and Dr. Donald Dutton, another top researcher in the field, who detailed the ways in which research is stymied by political pressure and scare tactics – including false complaints of violence and sexual harassment filed against professors who refuse to cooperate.

 

The conference itself was subject to some harrassment. Organizers said that they invited feminist speakers to the conference but that these refused to participate when they heard MK Shamalov was invited, and even threatened to disrupt the conference.

 

International participants in the conference received letters from leftist organization Gush Shalom, calling on them to boycott the event because it was held partly in Ariel, in Samaria. Conferences held at Ariel in the past did not receive similar leftist pressure.

The international lecturers who were invited to speak – from the US and England - ignored the pressure and attended the event. The organizers, among them several female academics, also decided to press on with their plans. They include Prof. Sarah Ben-David, Head of Criminology Department at Ariel University Center, Dr. Hagit Bonny-Noach of Ariel University Center & Netanya Academic College, Dr. Yael Wilchek-Aviad of the Ariel University Center and Dr. Sharon Aharony-Goldenberg, of Netanya Academic College.